In most jurisdictions around the globe, estate settlement – the process whereby assets
of a deceased individual are transferred to beneficiaries – is a manually-intensive and
paper-based process that has failed to keep apace with citizens’ changing expectations
in a digital world. The process requires that multiple participants – actors which include
various levels of government, executors, beneficiaries, creditors, asset custodians,
funeral home directors, and others – come together in order to form a “business
network” to help settle any one particular estate. Because each party in the process
uses disparate databases to record estate-related transactions and events, and
because missteps can result in significant legal and financial liability, there is a general
lack of trust amongst participants in the estate settlement network, leading to significant
delays in the overall process.
Estateably’s platform accelerates the process by facilitating the flow of data and
documents between estate settlement participants, removing the need for executors to
act as middlemen between unrelated parties, and providing certainty that documents
and data are passing directly from trusted sources. Smart contracts embedded into the
platform ensure that jurisdiction-specifc estate laws, statutes, and procedures are
strictly followed.
In addition to providing attendees with an overview of how Estateably is incorporating
Distributed Ledger Technology to help revolutionize the estate administration industry,
the company’s founder and CEO will explain what makes Estateably different from other
companies attempting to apply blockchain to the estate settlement use case, describe
how uncovering business requirements early on in the company’s lifecycle helped to
drive the company’s selection of the appropriate blockchain framework, and share how
Estateably is responding to challenges inherent in creating a cross-industry consortium
by rethinking traditional business models to foster increased adoption and participation.